Last Longer
by Nobody Apologist
Summary: Ienzo is interested in the biology of the flowers in Radiant Garden and Kairi likes to help with his experiments.


**AN: I wasn't feeling great earlier so I wrote something to cheer me up, but a tiny bit of angst manage to sneak its way in and I'm sorry. There's also a lot of headcanons in here.**

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><p>Kairi left her house much earlier than she really needed to. Despite the fact that it was going to be a surprise and that Ienzo hadn't been expecting her, she still felt bad about giving the flowers to someone else and going home for the day before she could visit him.<p>

She didn't regret giving the flowers to the Blue Lady at all; she protected Kairi from the monsters that her brother was supposed to keep her away from after all. Their grandmother hadn't been too pleased with Kairi's story - aside from the Blue Lady herself - and Lea was subjected to nearly fifteen minutes of nagging once he'd walked through the door with the stars twinkling behind him. But Kairi did pick double the amount of flowers she usually would on her way to the center of town in compensation.

Kairi sneaked into her brother's room when the clock hanging on the kitchen wall struck eight. Lea was rather unresponsive until Kairi jumped on him. He then proceeded to tickle her mercilessly until she apologized. Once she'd caught her breath, she managed to convince him to walk her to the square. Although he threatened to tell Isa that it was her fault that Lea was waking him up so early, Kairi, entirely sure that Isa would find some way to blame Lea for it in the end, told Lea to go right ahead and definitely did not stumble during her dramatic exit from the room.

Kairi had learned to block out Lea's exaggerated sighs when she stopped to pick flowers. She used to force him to pick the flowers for her whenever he complained about how slow she was going, but now she'd graduated to slowing her movements to a ridiculously slow pace. Once they were in sight of Isa's house, Lea abandoned her to make her way up the street at her own pace. Lately Lea had been insisting on running up ahead of Kairi in order to plan a super secret event that Lea refused to explain to her, but had made her swear to keep it a secret from their grandmother anyway. Kairi didn't really like it, but she didn't want to be the tattling little sister, so she continued to search for the red flowers she'd found yesterday and let Lea run ahead to wake his best friend.

Kairi and Isa got along well enough. Due to her role as the little sister, she didn't spend too much time with him, and she'd never seen him without Lea somewhere nearby. He didn't tease her for bringing flowers to Ienzo every couple of days though, so he was better than Lea in at least one area. However Isa had been looking at her strangely for the past few weeks. He seemed almost sad, maybe even guilty. Lea had brushed it off when she'd asked him about it as Isa simply being in one of his moods.

Isa was giving her that same look when she reached the front gate of his house. He'd groggily stumbled out the door, shook his head at whatever Lea had just suggested, and then his features softened when he caught sight of her. Kairi, unsure of how to respond, waved at him, and soon the two boys were following her down the street.

While Ienzo often sneaked out on his own anyway, it was a guarantee that he'd be walking through the main part of town with Ansem the Wise on a Saturday morning. One of the guards often accompanied him on the weekdays, and every so often the scientist who Kairi could never remember the name of would also walk around with Ienzo.

Kairi had begun to talk to Ienzo nearly a year ago when Lea and Isa had run off too quickly for her to follow. Ienzo had come around the corner and nearly tripped on a hole in the sidewalk only two minutes later, and Kairi had immediately introduced herself. The tall scientist had shown up eventually and thanked her for keeping Ienzo occupied in a safe area before he and Ienzo began their walk back to the castle.

She'd kept an eye out for Ienzo after that first meeting, and the two had soon become friends. Kairi did most of the talking since Ienzo didn't speak all that often, but sometimes he'd tell her about the experiments he and the scientist - she could swear his name started with an E - conducted back at the castle. For the past few months, Ienzo had been interested in the local flora - a word Kairi had repeated for the rest of the day when she'd first heard it - and was trying to see how long different types of flowers stayed alive and under what conditions did they last longer. Kairi had helped him pick some flowers the first day, but had soon gotten into the habit of bringing flowers from her, Lea, and Isa's neighbourhood to him since those flowers were too far away from the castle.

Lea ruffled her hair when they got to the square, and told her to wait there until he came to bring her home for lunch. Isa told her that she shouldn't eat too much ice cream, to which Lea responded with a nudge to the shoulder and telling Isa to "let her live a little". The two boys ran off towards the castle, and Kairi sat down to count out her flowers. Ienzo had mumbled a request for certain types today, and Kairi was not planning on disappointing him.

She heard the familiar chuckle of Ansem the Wise behind her once she'd sorted her flowers into a specific formation, and turned around to be greeted by the man himself with Ienzo holding on to his coat sleeve. Ansem smiled down at her, and left the two children to go buy ice cream for the three of them at the shop not three feet away.

Kairi stood up and held the flowers out to Ienzo. And as he let a small smile grace his face and he began to mumble about what he was planning on doing with this new batch, Kairi found that she couldn't work up the courage to tell him that she would soon be moving away.


End file.
